Raipur: A special Central Bureau of Investigation court in Raipur on Monday granted bail to journalist Vinod Verma, who was arrested from his home in Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh on October 27 for allegedly attempting to blackmail a minister in Chhattisgarh.
The Chhattisgarh Police had claimed to have seized from Verma’s residence 500 copies of a CD with sexually explicit content that allegedly features minister Rajesh Munat. The journalist’s counsel accused the police of planting them.
The former BBC journalist and Editors Guild of India member has denied the accusations levelled against him, and has said that he was being falsely implicated in the case. He told reporters that he possessed a video clip featuring Munat. “That is why Chhattisgarh government is not happy with me,” he added. In 2016, Verma was part of a fact-finding team of the Editors Guild of India that investigated the arrests and threats faced by journalists in the state.
